Thursday, July 17, 2008

The post states: “our algorithms understand that in the query [new york times square church] the user is looking for the well-known church in Times Square and not for articles from the New York Times.”

Suggestion: Assume in this example that many users are actually looking for a well-known church in Times Square when they enter the query: [new york times square church].

The first search clearly returns higher quality results than the second search. The results list the well-known church in Times Square.

The problem is that according to the post, the second set of search keywords, which is closer to natural language than the first set of keywords, expresses more precisely what the user is attempting to search for.

Why doesn't the set of keywords that expresses more precisely what the user is attempting to search for return superior results?